1. Technical Field
This invention relates to an inspection system for inspecting a container made of a translucent material which has been filled with a transparent or semi-transparent liquid product on a production line and which will not readily stand on its own in an upright attitude, and particularly to an integrated soft bag inspection system for performing various inspections such as checks for the inclusion of foreign matter and for external defects on a so-called xe2x80x98soft bagxe2x80x99, a flat, pliant container filled with an intravenous feed solution or the like.
2. Prior Art
As the applicable food sanitary laws are based on HACCP and the PL (product liability) regulations are enforced, it will be obligatory to avoid any undesired incident, such as microbial contamination or entrance of impurities, which may occur in all steps of food quality control from the production and process of food and medicine products to storage, shipment, and consumption of the products and to increase the cleanliness and the safety of such products.
HACCP stands for hazard analysis of critical control points which has been developed in U.S.A. and is known throughout the world as one of the best sanitary control system methods. The HACCP is intended for evaluating the safety of products in all manufacturing processes as compared with conventional sanitary control methods where the final products are a subject to be inspected the HACCP particularly focuses on the preventive quality control in each process and consists mainly of two major sections: hazard analysis and critical control points. Any possibility of hazardous incidents such as microbial contamination which may occur in each step of the manufacturing and processing of foods and the storage and shipment of products before the end consumers is reviewed and analyzed through determining the critical control points for preventive actions and the control standards and constantly monitoring and checking the records of control whether or not the requirements are fulfilled within allowance. Also, other hazardous items are controlled by the pre-requisite program to prevent any adulteration in the process and to improve the safety quality of products.
In manufacturing and processing plants for liquid products (e.g. beverages and liquid medicines), heating and pasteurization processes are used for preventing microbial contamination in the production line and removal of impurities with cyclone separators or the like is implemented for adulteration. After a container such as a can or a bottle is filled, a final inspection is carried out utilizing light transmission or reflection. For example, when a transparent container filled with a liquid such as a medicine or a drink is the product to be inspected, an image of the container is picked up with a CCD camera and digitized image data is processed by an image-processor to check for the presence of foreign matter included in the liquid inside the container and for flaws in the container and so on, and on this basis a determination of whether the final product is good or defective is made automatically.
Containers filled with a liquid product like this are normally cylindrical or prismatic like PET bottles and beer bottles. A container of this kind can stand up on its own, and, because it is made of a relatively hard material, will not deform when laid on its side, stood upside-down or tilted. Nor will such a container deform when gripped from both sides and carried or rotated by gripping belts. Because of this it is relatively easy to bring the container to a desired attitude using certain carrying mechanisms and inspection mechanisms, and consequently the detection of included foreign matter and the detection of flaws in the container can be carried out automatically using an image-processing device.
However, in the case of a so-called xe2x80x98soft bagxe2x80x99, a flat, pliant container filled with an intravenous feed solution or the like, because the shape readily deforms and the surface easily suffers damage, with related art inspection equipment inspection has not been possible, and it has not been possible to adapt foreign matter inspection systems designed for inspecting bottles and the like to be used for inspecting soft bags. Consequently, it has been the situation that inspections carried out after a soft bag is filled with a liquid product are carried out by hand, visually. For example, generally an inspector has held a soft bag arriving on a belt conveyor or the like in the hand, held the face of the soft bag up to an electric lamp or a fluorescent light, and checked for included foreign matter and flaws in the bag visually. And because small foreign bodies and transparent container fragments and the like are difficult to detect with the human eye, there has been a danger of foreign bodies going undiscovered. Also, with automatic production on a production line this inspection step has constituted a bottleneck, and for mass production a large number of people have been needed for the inspection stage.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to overcome the difficulty of inspection associated with the unstable shape peculiar to soft bags, and provide an integrated soft bag inspection system which makes it possible to carry out inspection of soft bags automatically and with high precision.
The present invention relates to an integrated soft bag inspection system for inspecting a soft bag having been filled with a liquid on a production line using a robot having at least a robot hand, and to achieve the above-mentioned object and other objects the invention provides image pickup means for picking up an image of the soft bag and grip position detecting means for detecting a position on a neck part of the soft bag to be gripped by the robot hand on the basis of image information from the image pickup means.
Preferably, there are further provided a table made from a transparent material on which the soft bag is placed lying on its side and a flat light for shining a substantially uniform light toward the underside of the table, and the grip position detecting means detects the position to be gripped on the neck part on the basis of an image of the soft bag picked up by the image pickup means from above the table: the table is made of a hard glass filter comprising an optical filter for preventing diffused reflection; and a carrying system is made up of a plurality of robots and there are provided carrying control means for controlling the robots so that the robot hand of each robot grips the neck part of the soft bag and carries the soft bag to a predetermined inspection position and the soft bag is transferred between adjacent robots, and various inspections are carried out on the soft bag successively.
And preferably, the soft bag is a bag for intravenous feed use filled with an intravenous feed solution and the inspections include a foreign matter inspection and at least one inspection from among the group consisting of a seal peeling inspection of a top face part of the soft bag, a dirt inspection of a port part, a shape defect inspection, a print-blurring inspection and inspection for a different sort of product; a plurality of robots are disposed on a soft bag inspection stage in two lines facing each other and soft bags arriving in a single line from a production line are carried distributed between the robots of the two lines; and, of soft bags arriving continuously in a single line from the production line, soft bags in odd positions in the line are carried by one of the lines of robots and soft bags in even positions are carried by the other line of robots.
And preferably, for inspecting a soft bag having been filled with a liquid on a production line, there are provided image pickup means for picking up an image of the soft bag and laser light radiating means for radiating laser beams in the form of a mesh over an entire face of the soft bag, and whether the soft bag is good or defective is checked on the basis of image information from the image pickup means by detecting disruption of an image of the mesh form. Also, preferably an optical filter is provided between the soft bag and the image pickup means.
The invention also provides an integrated soft bag inspection system having at least two inspection steps for inspecting a soft bag having been filled with a liquid on a production line, wherein a step of printing information which must be printed on the soft bag in the production line is provided before a final step and thus the printed information is printed and inspected within the inspection process.
The invention also provides an integrated soft bag inspection system for inspecting in real time every one of soft bags arriving continuously from a production line having been filled with a liquid on the production line, using robots each having at least a robot hand as carrying means for carrying the soft bags, comprising: image pickup means for picking up an image of a soft bag; grip position detecting means for detecting a position on a neck part of the soft bag to be gripped by the robot hand of a robot on the basis of image information from the image pickup means; first inspection means for, on the basis of image information from the image pickup means picked up with the soft bag gripped by the neck part and held upright by a robot hand, performing a seal peeling inspection of a top face part of the soft bag and a dirt inspection of a port part; second inspection means for, on the basis of image information from the image pickup means picked up with laser beams in the form of a mesh being radiated over an entire face of the soft bag, inspecting for shape defects including sealing defects of the soft bag proper by detecting disruption of the mesh-form image; third inspection means for, on the basis of image information from the image pickup means picked up with the soft bag placed lying on its side on a table made from a transparent material, inspecting for foreign matter including foreign matter included in the soft bag; fourth inspection means for, on the basis of image information from the image pickup means picked up with the soft bag placed lying on its side on a table made from a transparent material, inspecting for blurring of printed information pre-printed on the soft bag and inspecting for whether a different sort of bag is included; printing means for printing on the soft bag while the soft bag is being carried by the robot in a vertical attitude information which must be printed on the soft bag on the production line; and fifth inspection means for inspecting the printed information printed by the printing means.
Preferably, the third inspection means performs the inspection for foreign matter on the basis of image information from the image pickup means picked up with the soft bag placed on the table so that a printed face of the soft bag is uppermost and with the flat light brought close to or into contact with a flat face of the soft bag; and the fourth inspection means performs the inspection for blurring of the printed information and for whether a different sort of bag is included on the basis of image information from the image pickup means picked up with the soft bag placed on the table so that a printed face of the soft bag is lowermost and with the flat light brought close to or into contact with a flat face of the soft bag.